Crofton Black

Surveillance Secrets Trove of surveillance data challenges what we thought we knew about location tracking tools, who they target and how far they have spread

Story, film and audio documentary links getting added here across this week www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

& foundational partners @papertrailmedia.de esp @bastianobermayer.bsky.social @vonelisa.bsky.social @rettermaria.bsky.social @hmnzngr.bsky.social @leahruschka.bsky.social

This investigation would not have been possible without @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social who got the initial scoop & colleagues @emmanfre.bsky.social @orariccardo.bsky.social @daniel-howden.bsky.social

And it was also a surprise to be able to dig into what many people have long suspected, previously unproven, which was how this type of govt-grade software ended up being used for corporate & private interests

Maybe people are getting inured to tales of hostile tracking by authoritarian governments. But it was a surprise to us to find the Vatican aka "Pope City" looming large in here as a surveillance tech consumer, via the good offices of a British corporate intel firm

The surveillance empire that tracked world leaders, a Vatican enemy, and maybe you Inside the hidden world of First Wap, whose untraceable tech has targeted politicians, journalists, celebrities, and activists around the globe.

This is real in-the-wild targeting data from First Wap and it extends across a mindblowing range of targets www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

We've seen SS7 location tracking data before. But often what's recorded is thwarted efforts, things that got caught by firewalls. Not this time.

Why this happened: last year my colleague
@gabrielgeiger.bsky.social stumbled across a trove of data from then-unknown surveillance company First Wap. A big trove of data. 1.5 million rows in fact

People often ask what it's like behind the scenes at the world's top spy tech trade fair, ISS World. Turns out it's like this bsky.app/profile/ligh...